Originally Posted by
The Nutts Mutts
It seems that they're caught between a rock and a hard place here. They'll obviously want to sell as many seats as possible, but doing so increases the risk of a tech stop and if that happens, given the time it would add to the sector, it's very unlikely the aircraft would make it back to Southampton before the airport closed for the night.
I also don't get why they could be performance limited having sold less than 97 seats, surely the 97 seat figure was arrived at to make the performance work? Otherwise why not just sell the whole aircraft and tech stop if required?
That said, I don't understand the negativity towards Lolo on here. I don't like the name and the website could be much better than it currently is, but at least they are trying something new and innovating.
I'm sure SOU airport aren't pinning all their hopes for the future on them, but if they succeed it will be good for the airport as well as the airline.
It just seems strange that people who post on the SOU forum and are supposedly supportive of the airport seem to take great delight in ripping Lolo to shreds seemingly just for existing and trying to make new routes work from SOU. I'd understand it from BOH fanboys but it does seem a little strange how much dislike Lolo have attracted on here from almost everyone.
i don't think folk here are showing negativity towards Lolo - it's more like informed observation and from experience - (professional airline experience, not amrchair CEO's and plane spotters) my 40 years of holiday airline experience tells me that Lolo needs to do something to make their services work and be apparent from SOU and as fas I can see they have not - whether that be advertising local and or more distant, travel agencies, and getting other tour operators on board to share the load and risk of the flight series etc etc
Volotea did not make it with selling their own scheduled services from SOU nor SEN so they just fly in now for TUI Holidays (packages)
Air Malta has started from SEN to MLA via on some days Cagliari and Catania with selling rights
the IT market down this way EXT BOH and SOU is pretty much sewn up by TUI and in part Thomas Cook from EXT
Palmair is long gone sadly and they were the only ones who made it work, once - and they had a massive loyal repeat clientele plus their own high st agencies - but still they closed down.